For Home and Country – Victory Liberty Loan

Description

This poster is one of many used in the nationwide campaign to promote the sale of Liberty Bonds. The overwhelming success of this campaign is witnessed by the fact that in five Liberty Loans over twenty-one billion dollars, representing more than sixty-six million individual subscriptions, were raised, supplying approximately two-thirds of the war funds used during actual hostilities. It is estimated that between one-fourth to one-third of the entire population bought one or more Liberty Bonds.
The poster "For Home and Country," issued for the last, "Victory" Liberty Loan, stresses the theme of the resumption of normal family relations which had been disrupted by the war and could only be secured if the funds necessary to "finish the job" were forthcoming from the last Liberty Loan. The artist conveys these sentiments quickly through the effective organization of the poster. The viewer first reads "for Home and Country," seeing at almost the same time the image of the happy family, then reads the message, "Victory Liberty Loan." In this way, the viewer receives the implication that the victory, which will make such reunions possible, can only be won if the last Liberty Loan is successful. The poster may seem too sentimental to today's eyes, playing on emotions which were stronger in an earlier generation, but have since grown less intense. We may be cynical about the value of the family bond, but in a time when people were perhaps less cynical and believed that bond was being threatened, a poster such as this was highly effective. Orr has designed an easily understandable poster that appealed to many people during the time of the Great War, and one has to give him credit for that even if the style and theme may not be to our liking.